Botanical classification: Interspecific Prunus salicinaxc3x97(Prunus salicinaxc3x97Prunus armeniaca).
Variety denomination: xe2x80x98Plumsweetthreexe2x80x99.
In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, I, the inventor, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. I also grow a lesser number of open pollination seeds of each of these fruits. During my plant breeding career I have hybridized many plum trees using a variety of plum, apricot, and interspecific plum-apricot pollen. Some of these interspecific plum-apricot hybrids include xe2x80x98Red Velvetxe2x80x99 (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 7,011), xe2x80x98Royal Velvetxe2x80x99 (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 7,431), and a few unnamed interspecific trees that produce fruit of various skin and flesh colors, including pure yellow skin and flesh. Over the years I isolated about twenty trees of desirable plums and these interspecific trees at my home orchard near Le Grand, Calif. During the summer of 1997 I gathered fruit from one of these trees, an unnamed red plum that was an open pollinated seedling of xe2x80x98Bradgreenxe2x80x99 (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 8,498) plum. The seeds from this fruit were removed, cracked, stratified, germinated, and grown as seedlings on their own root in my greenhouse. Upon reaching dormancy that fall, they were transplanted as a group with the label xe2x80x9cRed Plum (OP)xe2x80x9d to a cultivated area of my experimental orchard at Bradford Farms near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). During the evaluation season of 2001, the present variety was selected as a single plant from the group of seedlings described above.
The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of interspecific plum tree, which has been denominated varietally as xe2x80x98Plumsweetthreexe2x80x99. The present variety exhibited several indications that it was probably a cross between the seed parent, an unnamed red plum, and an unnamed interspecific plum-apricot hybrid tree with pure yellow skin and flesh. Those traits included a red and yellow two-tone skin color, yellow flesh, and a plum taste with a hint of apricot flavor. Subsequent to origination of the present interspecific plum tree, I asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original plant in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of xe2x80x98Nemaguardxe2x80x99 (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
The present variety is similar to its seed grandparent, xe2x80x98Bradgreenxe2x80x99 (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 8,498), by being self-unfruitful and by producing fruit that is globose in shape, acidic and sweet in flavor, firm in texture, and matures in mid August, but is distinguished therefrom by blooming about ten days later and by producing fruit that is two-tone red and yellow instead of purely green in skin color, that is semi-freestone rather than clingstone in type, that is less susceptible to skin scuffing, and that has a unique plum with a hint of apricot flavor.
The present interspecific plum variety is characterized by a medium size, vigorous, hardy, and productive tree. Being self-unfruitful, the present variety requires cross pollination from another plum that blooms during the late season, such as xe2x80x98Autumn Yummy(copyright)xe2x80x99 (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 14,178). The fruit matures under the ecological conditions described during mid August, with first picking on Aug. 7, 2003. The fruit is uniformly large in size, two-tone red and yellow in skin color, semi-freestone in type, purely yellow in flesh color, firm in texture, very good in cold storage, and mildly acidic and very sweet. In flavor, which is predominately plum with a hint of apricot.